Against Poverty: A Common Measure
| Published date | 01 September 2004 |
| Date | 01 September 2004 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852304046199 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Against poverty: a common measure
Michel Legros
Abstract
There is no scientific basis to the definition of poverty: it is the outcome of a con-
vention translated by indicators and measured by statistics. But this definition is
used when setting up and evaluating public policy and is, therefore, of vital impor-
tance for the many social, public and private parties involved. The setting up in
France in 1999 of an ‘Observatoire’, a body monitoring poverty and social exclu-
sion, was a particularly original response to the problem of providing a shared
view, across the board, of poverty in a country. Made up of representatives from
the main administrative bodies producing data, researchers and universities,
alongside representatives from associations, the Observatoire publishes a report
every 18 months describing the main developments with regard to the poor and
emphasizing particular aspects of poverty — people with no fixed abode, the
geographical distribution of poverty within the country, the access of the poor to
their rights, the image of poverty, etc.
Measuring poverty: scientific issue, political issue
However complex the economists and statisticians try to make it appear, the
measure of poverty is first nothing other than the definition of a convention. Whether
the result takes the form of a percentage of median income, before tax or after social
transfers, as is the case in European countries,1, 2 whether it is based on the construc-
tion of predefined needs linked to several coefficients to take account of inflation or
the evolution of social and economic standards in recent decades3or whether it only
counts persons having only a minimum income as resources, it remains a convention
between actors making it possible to define who is poor. In the administration of
public policies, this threshold is important because it allows one to establish the
Michel Legros is Director of the Policies and Health and Social Institutions Department of the
National School of Public Health and a member of the National Poverty and Social Exclusion
Observatory.
Copyright © 2004 IIAS, SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol 70(3):439–453 [DOI:10.1177/0020852304046199]
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
To continue reading
Request your trial